Area girls tennis teams kept out of state

CEDAR RAPIDS – Two trips to Cedar Rapids Washington, nothing much to show for them.

The Marshalltown girls’ tennis team was denied any sort of state qualification on Thursday morning as the Bobcats’ singles and doubles factions were ousted from Class 2A Region 5 action.

All three of Marshalltown’s outgoing seniors involved in the regional got a win before their time ran up.

The Bobcats’ top singles player Rachel Faircloth scored a 6-4, 6-1 victory over Dubuque Hempstead’s Abbey Ahlrichs in their opening-round match. In the quarterfinals, Faircloth was eliminated by second-seeded Kristin King of Cedar Rapids Washington, 6-1, 6-1.

King was eventually defeated by Katie Meyer of Hempstead, 6-1, 6-3, in the finals.

It was Meyer who took down Bobcat sophomore Megan Riemenschneider in her first regional appearance, 6-0, 6-0, in the quarterfinals.

On the doubles side, MHS seniors Maggie Kelehan and Rhetta Wenk collected a 6-0, 6-0 triumph over Waterloo East’s Tayanna Jones and Aliyah Campbell. In the quarterfinals, Kelehan and Wenk lost by the same score to top seeds Rina Moore and Lilly Hartman of Cedar Rapids Washington.

Four Marshalltown-area teams were denied state qualification from their respective regional tournaments. South Tama, Grundy Center and South Hardin each played in Waterloo, while AGWSR was blanked at the Decorah regional.

South Hardin’s top finishers were its doubles teams, as both won first-round matches before falling in the quarterfinals. Katie Branch and Mikayla Fisher went 1-1 on the day, as did Shannon Teske and Kailey Richard. Singles players Hannah Reifschneider was ousted in the first round by Grundy Center’s Sydnie Gutosky, 6-0, 6-0, while Ellen Swartz was defeated by Cedar Rapids Xavier’s Alison Jasper, 6-4, 6-3.